A successful partnership between Butterwick Hospice at Bishop Auckland and the Sedgefield and Durham Dales Primary Care Trusts has been expanded to help heart patients.

The new service offers patients suffering heart failure to learn more about their illness and ways to manage the symptoms.

The three hour sessions provide experts in the field who will offer half hour talks to help patients understand the illness.

There will also be access to two specialist nurses who are being part-funded by the British Heart Foundation. They will talk to patients about their symptoms and give advice on the best way to manage them.

Instruction in gentle tai-chi exercises will be offered and the Butterwick's complementary therapists and counsellors will be on hand to help patients.

The new service is based at the Butterwick Hospice in Bishop Auckland and Paula Wood, nurse manager, said she was delighted that the hospice could expand its partnership with the PCTs to offer help to patients who would not normally use the hospice at this stage in their illness

Paula said: "We have looked for ways in which we can expand our services to non-cancer patients with life-limiting illnesses and by working in co-operation with our colleagues within the PCTs we have found ways in which we can help to provide an improved service to patients."

Helen Trivedi who will be providing the tai-chi element of the new service and she said: "Heart failure patients are a group with whom exercise rehabilitation is just beginning to take off."